With one more victory over Ottawa the Anaheim Ducks would append an NHL championship to general manager Brian Burke’s résumé.

It would also add to Burke’s image as one of the league’s most fascinating figures – a silver-haired, erudite, Ivy League-educated, frequently brusque, seldom-smiling man of contradictions who shows little of himself to the public.

“The private side of Brian Burke is private,” Burke said in Ottawa this week. “My family sees (that), my friends see that. But I’m not interested in you guys understanding me.”

One thing is clear: Burke’s passionate belief in letting players self-police the game. It’s more typical of an old-school hockey man from Alberta than of an American with a Harvard law degree.

This season, the Ducks – who would win the Stanley Cup Finals with a victory tonight – led the league in fighting majors. Burke, the NHL’s former discipline czar, is a leader in the movement to relax the instigator rule, a rule that calls for a fight’s clear instigator to receive an extra two-minute minor penalty. His argument is that relaxing or eliminating the instigator rule wouldn’t necessarily lead to more fighting, but further enable players to stand up for their teammates.

As is, Anaheim players have been garnering headlines for more than winning.

Ducks fourth-line winger Brad May punched Minnesota’s Kim Johnsson in the back of the head in Game 4 of a first-round series, leading to a three-game suspension. Ducks defenseman Chris Pronger twice has been suspended in the postseason for what the league deemed to be dirty hits, the latest when he sat out Monday’s Game 4 of the Finals after a blow to the head of Ottawa’s Dean McAmmond in Game 3.

Burke’s defenses of his standout defenseman have been understandable, yet almost tortuous in their rationalizations. After the NHL’s Colin Campbell suspended Pronger for the Game 3 blow, Burke conceded it was a hit to the head but argued that another hit in the same game – Chris Neil’s on Anaheim’s Andy McDonald – was worse.

Asked at a news conference in Ottawa whether the Ducks’ reputation was a factor in the league’s ruling, Burke said: “You’ll have to ask Colin. We play a certain style. It has been successful for us. We’re not a dirty team. We’re a physical team. There’s a big difference.”

Learning work ethic

Burke was born in New England and raised in Minnesota, where his parents required each of their nine children to read library books for an hour a night and to bring a new word (and a definition) to the dinner table.

In addition to longtime hockey men with blue-collar roots, many folks of obvious intelligence wholeheartedly subscribe to the North American pro game’s traditional “code” of fighting as a deterrent. But it all can seem discordant at times, and it does with Burke.

Unquestionably, though, it has been part of a winning formula.

New Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli hired Burke three years ago, one month after his ouster as GM of the Vancouver Canucks. He also had been the GM of the Hartford Whalers before his stint as the NHL’s senior vice president and director of hockey operations.

It took a coach’s orders to get Burke on that track.

In the early 1970s, Burke was a Providence College defenseman and team captain. Lou Lamoriello, the Friars’ coach and athletic director, called Burke to his office and slid an application for the Law School Admission Test across his desk. Burke looked at Lamoriello as if he were being asked to apply for astronaut training. His coach came back with the gruff rejoinder that this was not a request; it was an order. Soon, he was at Harvard.

Burke briefly played minor-league hockey before pursuing his law studies and career full time, and was working for a Boston law firm when some of his former teammates began asking for legal advice, and he became a player agent. That led to a stint as the Canucks’ assistant GM, a 15-month stay at Hartford, and then his move to the league office.

His path also gives hints of his loyalties: He cites his major influences as his father; Lamoriello, now the New Jersey Devils’ longtime president and general manager; Pat Quinn, who hired him for his first stint at Vancouver; and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

“Working for Gary Bettman was like getting an MBA,” he said. “The guy’s a genius, and he’s a great guy.”

The Canucks were in turmoil when he took over in June 1998, but he brought in former Avalanche coach Marc Crawford behind the bench and the franchise was turned around.

In 2004, Vancouver winger Todd Bertuzzi’s attack on Avalanche forward Steve Moore – plus the international firestorm and the Canucks’ subsequent quick departure from the playoffs – helped to arrest any momentum. Ultimately, Burke was shown the door in May 2004 and signed with the Ducks the next month.

Off the hook

Moore’s original lawsuit, filed in Colorado but thrown out for jurisdictional reasons, included among the defendants Burke and May, a member of the Canucks on the night Moore was attacked. Moore’s filing cited alleged incendiary statements made by May and Burke about Moore as tensions built after Moore’s Feb. 22 hit on Vancouver captain Markus Naslund. The current suit pending in Ontario lists only the Canucks, the team ownership and Bertuzzi as the defendants. Burke and May, reunited with the Ducks, no longer have to sweat that.

Burke’s assistant, Dave Nonis, succeeded him as the Vancouver GM, and the two men remain friends. In Ottawa this week, Nonis said Burke likes his gruff reputation.

“He’s a great guy to work for,” Nonis said. “With Brian, you know where you stand. He does have that air about him … but that’s not the way he is. He’s a very intelligent man. He wants people to do well. A lot of that stuff you see is partly show, but it’s worked well for him. But that’s not what we see.”

Said Nashville general manager David Poile, “When he walks into a room, he’s a guy everybody goes to.”

After the NHL was dark for the 2004-05 season, Burke finally got to watch his new team play. The Ducks made the Western Conference finals a year ago, losing to Edmonton. Burke has gone out of his way to point out that his predecessor, Bryan Murray, now the Ottawa coach, was instrumental in building the current roster, but Burke’s moves have included signing Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne as unrestricted free agents and trading for Pronger, deals that just might put Anaheim over the top.

Brian Burke

Born: June 30, 1955

Playing career: Providence College (1973-77), then 72 games in the American Hockey League with Springfield and Maine.

Professional career: Received law degree from Harvard (1981), then worked as an attorney and a player agent in Boston until joining Vancouver as an assistant general manager (1987). Was general manager of the Hartford Whalers (1992-93) before joining the NHL as senior vice president and director of hockey operations. Served as GM at Vancouver (1998-2004) and at Anaheim (2004-present).

Staff writer Adrian Dater contributed to this story. Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.

A graduate of Wheat Ridge High School and the University of Colorado, Terry Frei has been named a state's sportswriter of the year six times -- three times each in Oregon and Colorado. He mainly covers college football and hockey for The Post. He's the author of seven books, including the novel "Olympic Affair" about Colorado's Glenn Morris, the 1936 Olympic decathlon champion.

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